Last week we watched as Gordon Ramsay, Joe Bastianich and Graham Elliot of Fox‘s Masterchef chose the top 18 contestants. This week, the competition heats up as the hopefuls must really get creative with their recipes tonight! Keep reading to find out who impressed tonight and what Joe found out!

Masterchef kicked off tonight with their mystery box challenge. For those of you who are not familiar with it from last season, the mystery box challenge consists of a box of mystery ingredients in which the contestants have an hour to create a delicious dish out of. Tonight’s box contained: salmon, strawberries, fennel, white asparagus, pistachios, dill, puff pastry, and balsamic vinegar.

It proved to be a tough challenge though for some, but the judges were really watching closely to see who would make proper use of the strawberries, which were the oddball ingredient in the box. For this challenge, the judges would only be tasting three dishes based on how they looked and from the looks of things they picked out Ben as the worst dish. Gordon said it had a hideous sauce, was overcooked (even without tasting it he could tell) and Graham commented that it was the biggest disappointment of the challenge.

So who had the best dishes tonight? The top three and the only three that the judges tasted were Suzy, Cristian and Jennie. Suzy was up first with her trio of salmon (pickled, smoked and grilled) in which the judges loved, but Gordon thought less berries would have been better. Cristian was up next with what Joe called a “restaurant quality” dish of Pistachio crusted salmon. Gordon loved this dish and said it was right on the money while Graham thought it was crusted perfectly. Finally it was Jennie with her savory salmon tart with caramelized fennel that all three judges thought was impressive and yummy.

But they had to choose one winner for the challenge on Masterchef and that was Cristian! Cristian would also get a huge advantage because he got to choose the theme for the elimination challenge. The choices were Spain, France or Britain, and Gordon reminded him to choose carefully either what he could cook well or what he thought his competitors would not be able to cook. Cristian decided on France, but it made no difference because Gordon told him that he would not be cooking in this challenge, and in fact he was safe from elimination tonight!

The remainder of the chefs scrambled to get ingredients and put something impressive together. Oddly enough, as he watched them, Gordon referred to a few dishes as looking like a “plate of shit”. When it was time to taste these dishes (they would be tasting all three) some standouts were Max with his cod and mussels dish and Derrick with his perfectly prepared Gougere. Giuseppe was also commended for his perfect pastry, as was Suzy for her impressive tart duo.

Now on to the horrid dishes for the elimination challenge, but where do we start? Jennie, who impressed in the last challenge did a complete 180 this time, giving the judges a trio of soups which were anything but. Gordon and Graham went easy on her, but Joe was not easy at all on her. Joe took her soup and started to fling it around the plate calling it “not soup” and more like “baby food”…..can’t put anything past Joe can you? Wait, it gets better!

Christine presented a pork chop that Gordon couldn’t even cut through so they didn’t bother to taste it, while Angel presented a “fruit tart” minus the tart. But the worst two dishes had to go to Erryn, who attempted to pawn off a Carpaccio as a French dish when it is Italian and Mark, who thought he could pull a fast one on the judges. Joe, once again found out exactly what was in Mark’s mashed potatoes – uncooked flour! To Joe and the judges, Mark just committed the worst cooking sin of all – just as Graham told us in their interview that we could expect!

In the end, it was Angel who was going home and while everyone tried to breathe a sigh of relief, they were then informed that a second contestant would be going home tonight. Of course, Joe made sure that it was Mark who would be heading home for trying to pull one over on the judges tonight. Tune in tomorrow for another brand new episode of Masterchef on Fox!